As we pleasantly pass the hours sifting through the stack of seed catalogs building up on the magazine rack by our favorite chair, and as we begin to think about which seeds we should indulge ourselves in this year, an industry is awakening quietly across the countryside.

While greenhouses appear to be asleep under the thick blanket of snow, looking cold and lifeless from the outside, they’re beginning to teem with activity.

We won’t see the fruit of their labor until late April when the pansies tempt our senses or in May when the hanging baskets and bedding plants beckon, but as we speak greenhouses are coming to life across our state.

Many greenhouse operators and their workers are bent over seeding machines, filling tray after tray and pot after pot with growing medium. They’re setting up irrigation lines, making last-minute repairs to equipment and organizing volumes of production records to track their work for this season.

Across New England, greenhouses are part of a growing industry – being called “the environmental horticulture industry” – that also includes nurseries, garden centers, landscapers and tree-care specialists. Released just a year ago, results of a study sponsored by the New England Nursery Association found that New England boasts more than 12,000 businesses in this expanding industry. In short, the study found that the industry is valued at just under $4 billion. That’s right, billion. In Maine alone, the industry is worth about $288 million. Just between 1993 and 1998 our industry grew by $93 million. More than 115 new businesses have emerged; while more than 540 increased their income by a whopping average of 92 percent per company.

This data is rather astonishing, and it’s great news for the green industries of Maine. But what does it mean to you?

Probably a lot, but first and foremost, it means you’re very powerful. You have many more businesses to choose from when considering where to buy plant material come spring, and chances are your choice is going to have a big impact on those businesses you do and do not support.

Does it matter whether you purchase plant material at locally owned and operated greenhouses and nurseries or at a mass-merchandise retailer? Absolutely! When you buy from local folks, chances are you’re buying something more than that six-pack of impatiens or that gorgeous rosebush. You’re supporting a way of life – a most traditional way of life: farming. And although many of us would hesitate to lump “environmental horticulture” in with good, old-fashioned agriculture, it is exactly that: Agriculture.

Less than 2 percent of our population is engaged in commercial agriculture. It’s now said that the average person is four to five generations removed from an active farming life. That means chances are that the last generation of farmers in your family were either your great-grandparents or your great-great-grandparents.

What implications does this tidbit have for our society? Well, many, in my opinion, but that’s fodder for a book, not a garden column. The point I want to make here is our magnetism to horticulture – to work the earth, plant the seeds of hope, nurture the life that springs forth and reap the annual harvest – satisfies that ancient need to connect with the earth, to work it, to glean and claim its rewards for ourselves.

As consumers of Maine’s environmental horticulture industry, take credit where credit is due: According to the study the green industries are keeping more than 14,200 acres of farmland in agricultural production, with more than 6,400 acres in open space. In a time when the public dialogue has focused on the rapid consumption of land by suburban sprawl, you can say you’ve helped preserve productive, open space by keeping Maine’s greenhouses and nurseries alive and well.

Indeed, you’ve made them grow!

A summary of the environmental horticulture industry’s impact on the New England economy was conducted by the University of Maine and the University of Vermont and was supported by New England Grows, Inc. and the Horticultural Research Institute. For more information on the survey, visit the Web at http://pss.uvm.edu/ppp/nesurvey/index.htm.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, RR 1, Box 2120, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@ctel.net. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.